Prior-free online mechanisms for queueing with arrivals

Article Type

Research Article

Publication Title

Economic Theory

Abstract

Agents from a finite population arrive at various discrete times, and exit after they use a server for one period each. Each agent has a per-period cost of queueing, which constitutes his private information. Among direct mechanisms that are prior-free, i.e. independent of distributions of arrivals and costs, and online, i.e. charge only those present in the system, we characterize the class of dynamically strategy-proof mechanisms with least total waiting cost. The budget is balanced eventually under a mild condition on the arrival sequence, while a canonical mechanism that achieves budget balance in each period is also characterized under a stronger condition.

First Page

671

Last Page

700

DOI

10.1007/s00199-020-01308-7

Publication Date

9-1-2021

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